This article caught my attention, and combines my interests in bioscience, computer science, and Shakespeare: [...]
|
California has a proposition on the ballot that hopes to affect food costs for the entire country. Proposition 37 would require new labeling for certain foods that involve genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. [...] I was asked yesterday about the “surly bonds of Earth” reference in the post about Neil Armstrong’s death. There is indeed a story behind that and a very unusual young man. John Gillespie McGee Jr. was born in Shanghai to a US ambassador, thus was American. His initial school was in Shanghai, “The American School” [...] Once again, cantaloupes are causing a meloncholy feeling at the CDC, which used to be called the “Center for Disease Control.” (It got pluralized, and various tweaks were made because “control” was considered too late. It wound up as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which of course abbreviates to CDC.) [...] I was delighted, as were millions, by the successful touchdown of the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. It was a monumental achievement, of equipment working right (thanks to tremendous engineering and science) despite nearly a year’s exposure to extraordinary conditions and extremes in rapid succession. But as Sam Rayburn (48th, 50th, and 52nd Speaker of the House) notes, “Any jackass can kick down a barn. It takes a real carpenter to build one.” We’ve seen NASA in the role of “real carpenters” here. Who’s the “jackass”? [...] Tonight — 10:31 Pacific Time Sunday, or 1:31 AM Eastern on Monday — the Curiosity rover will hopefully touch down safely on the surface of Mars. The events actually take place about 14 minutes in advance, but we cannot know the results until the radio communications get from Mars to Earth. The vehicle is big. While the two famous rovers Opportunity and Spirit were roughly grocery-cart sized, this one is more like an automobile. It has tremendously greater science capability — and it is too big, and needs too much power, to operate from solar panels. So it does not: Curiosity is nuclear-powered. [...] In this case, the jellyfish was not built from scratch. They took the cells from a rat heart and equipped a silicone shell with them, set up in a protein structure in the manner of a jellyfish. This construct actually swims! [...] I became a member of CSICOP (the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal) decades ago. My Lady and I were there when they held a big fundraising event in the 1990s, featuring legendary comedian Steve Allen and some other guy named Jerry Seinfeld whom I was less impressed by. Mr. Allen performed a skit using my Lady as the foil, which we both enjoyed tremendously. But in recent years, the organization and its affiliates have disappointed me. [...] Crag Venter’s IPO doesn’t exist, in fact. But this eight-page story in New York Times Magazine is full of such adulation for the man that it seems most lilkely a build-up for an investment offering. Perhaps Venter is seeking private investors, and needed a boost in visibility. [...] The Scientific Method is actually less complex, in a way, than the pretentious title makes it sound. The essence is simple: Observe the world, looking for patterns Make a guess as to what might cause the patterns Make predictions: if your guess is true, what would you expect to happen? Test those predictions with observation [...] |
||
|
Copyright © 2013 DeHavelle.com - All Rights Reserved Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa |
||
Recent Comments